Donated land for illegal settlers not mortgaged, say

By December 3, 2019Headlines, News

THE 7,000-square meter property located in the island Barangay of Pugaro, which was donated to the Dagupan City government and to six illegal settlers in the area on July 15, 2018, was not mortgaged in 2016 by the donor family.

This was clarified by lawyer Frank Angeles, representing the Pablico family of Quezon City that donated the property to the city during the administration of Mayor Belen Fernandez when he addressed the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP) on November 26.

Angeles belied a radio report that the donated land was part of the property mortgaged by the Pablicos in 2016 with the Land Bank of the Philippines.

The donation to the city was made by Maria Elionor, Gerald, Allan, Arnold, and Artemio, all surnamed Pablico.        

“Somebody told me there is an issue in the media regarding this. Actually, there is none that we know of,” Angeles told the SP.

He pointed out that the 7,000 square meter property was part of the 50,000 square meters bought by the Pablicos on conditional sale from the Philippine National Bank in 2003 where a number of illegal settlers lived.

Under the Deed of Donation signed by the Pablicos in July 2018 with then Mayor Fernandez, it stipulated that each of the remaining six families within the 50,000 square meter lot owned by the Pablicos, shall be given 75 square meters each, to be taken from 70,000 square meters donated to the city as a compromise agreement to the six families. (The six families had filed a countersuit for nullification of the conditional sale of the property which is pending decision by the Regional Trial Court.)

On Councilor Jose Netu Tamayo’s query whether the Pablicos used the title of the 50,000  square meter property that included the lot they already donated to the city when it secured a loan of more than P8 million from Land Bank on July  2016 as collateral, Angeles said when the Pablicos went to the Land Bank, they told the bank that 7,000 square meters of the property was already donated and were mortgaging only 43,000 square meters.

Land Bank, he said, then required the Pablicos to segregate the donated 7,000 square meters from their property which they did and applied for the segregation plan with the Land Registration Authority (LRA) whose approval which is expected sometime in January next year.     

According to Angeles, the approved segregation plan will be submitted to the city soon adding that the city government will have to spend for the transfer of the title of the lots to the six families.

Despite Angeles’ lengthy explanation, the SP adopted Resolution No. R-5849 entitled ”requesting the city engineering office, thru the Office of the City Mayor, to suspend any introduction of improvement on the lot donated by the Pablicos situated in Barangay {Pugaro) till after the submission of the approved subdivision plan of the 7,000 square meter donated land. (Leonardo Micua)

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